My 2016 Year Ahead in Software Development
With my 2015 software development year in review done, I'm going to use this post to try something new: looking ahead at the big picture for what I want to accomplish in software throughout 2016. While I have a lot personally to look forward to in this year, I'm going to write strictly about my professional software career here.
The following goals are the high level objectives for the 366 days in 2016:
- Code, launch and operate my 2016 side project Plapi
- Inspire and equip fellow developers as a Twilio Developer Evangelist
- Release several new updates to The Full Stack Python Guide to Deployments book (free for existing customers)
- Build on the Full Stack Python foundation with daily updates
Let's dig in with more details on what each one of those objectives entails.
Plapi
The Programming Languages Web API (Plapi) is my 2016 side project. Plapi consists of three components:
- Web application programming interface: api.plapi.io
- Web application and documentation for the API: www.plapi.io
- iOS mobile app in App Store (perhaps an Android app if there's time)
Over the 2015 holidays I made a solid start on the API codebase. The web app is just a skeleton and the iOS mobile app, which will be written in Swift, will be started within the next few weeks.
Twilio Developer Evangelism
There's a whole lot of work to do in my day job at Twilio. 2016 will be a rush of inspiring and equipping fellow developers with existing APIs such as Voice, SMS, MMS and Client. In addition, there's new work to be done now that IP Messaging and Video have opened for public beta. It's an incredibly exciting time to be at Twilio. Our Developer Network crew (which encompasses Developer Evangelism) is fortunate to be on the front lines working with developers helping them learn how to incorporate the APIs and SDKs into their apps as well as giving their feedback to our internal developers.
Much of the work will be based on what we know works, such as:
- Coding and writing new apps and blog posts like Warm Phone Call Transfers (Python/Flask code), City Chat (Python/Django code) and Calculating Net Promoter Score via Twilio SMS (Python code)
- Putting on one of the best developer conferences: Signal 2016, which will be even better after having such a great time at Signal 2015.
- Serving my fellow colleagues on the Developer Network crew in whatever capacity they need to continue knocking it out of the park on their executions
- Reaching developers outside my traditional circles, such as by streaming coding on Livecoding.tv or Twitch Creative.
Full Stack Python
The Full Stack Python website was visited by over 455,000 users in 2015 according to Google Analytics. I hope to more than double the number of readers to over a million throughout 2016 by working on the following improvements:
- Improve existing pages with major updates such as new sections and links
- Write new topic pages based on readers' requests
- Create new visuals to help readers connect the dots on related subjects, for example how reverse proxy servers work with WSGI servers
If you have suggestions and feedback on the work I'm doing, please tweet me @mattmakai or @fullstackpython or send me an email (just a heads up though that I'm pretty slow to respond to most emails since I try to batch them up and answer them in bulk).
Guide to Python Deployments Book
I'm working on updates to The Full Stack Python Guide to Deployments book that'll be released in 2016. Some of the updates will be about keeping up with the latest versions of software used (such as Ansible 2.0), while other updates will add new content to help readers continue learning about Python web app deployments.
Time to Dig In
With those four big picture priorities on my mind it's time to get started coding and writing. We'll see in December how it all went.